Posted on January 16, 2013

The power of partisanship in governing outcomes had led Republicans to make their top seven targets the only Democrats representing a district were Barack Obama's 2008 presidential election trailed his national average by more than four percentage points.

Posted on January 08, 2013

A new FairVote analysis suggests that if both parties had run candidates in all 435 districts in the U.S. House elections in 2012, the Democratic margin of victory in the popular vote would have been even greater than its edge in the raw vote - a further indication of the partisan skew existing in current congressional elections.

Posted on December 20, 2012

President Barack Obama has a lot on his mind these days, but the state of our democracy remains critical. Fortunately, judging by Obama's record in the Illinois Senate --where he was the prime sponsor of legislation to advance cumulative voting and instant runoff voting - we haven't had a president as informed about good ideas for taking on electoral reform since James Madison and the founding generation.

Posted on December 16, 2012

This year's elections put a spotlight on the troubled nature of how we elect the House of Representatives, the alleged "people's house." But some of our smartest election experts don't seem to understand the root of the problems with House elections.

Posted on December 04, 2012

FairVote introduces its updated "incumbency bump" data for the 2012 election. Incumbents once again received a substantial advantage over challengers this year, although that bump was the lowest it has been since FairVote first began analyzing incumbency in 1996.

Posted on November 27, 2012

In southern states, racially polarized elections remain an active part of political life. Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act has guaranteed that African Americans in the South cannot be shut out of elections either through direct barriers to voting or through discriminatory districts that prevent the achievement of representation. However, relying on winner-take-all elections has inherent limitations. In the belt of southern states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas, the use of districting to achieve a fairer level of representation for African Americans has hit a ceiling. To push through that ceiling and achieve truly fair representation, FairVote recommends abandoning the single-member district in favor of super districts elected by choice voting.

Posted on November 20, 2012

President Barack Obama won the presidential election by more than four million votes and 129 electoral votes, but Mitt Romney has carried a large majority of U.S. House districts and a majority of House seats are held by Republicans representing a district where Obama was defeated. Those facts point to tensions in the months ahead--and to the value of rethinking our voting rules to ensure a level playing field for all.

Posted on November 15, 2012

Many observers of the American political process have bemoaned our increasingly partisan Congress, with representatives from both parties clinging to the party line and refusing to compromise with the other side. If you were hoping that the 2012 elections would help this problem, here's some bad news: things are only getting worse. The congressional moderate is on the verge of extinction.

Posted on November 13, 2012

Using its unique methods for analyzing the underlying preferences of voters, FairVote has determined that the Republican Party has a significant structural advantage in U.S. House elections. That advantage was the most important reason why the GOP kept a comfortable majority of 54% of seats in the House despite Democratic candidates having an overall 4% advantage in voter preference over their Republican opponents.